NURSING THE MUSE: THE CHILDBIRTH METAPHOR IN H. D.'S POETRY (DOOLITTLE).
Contributors: Tufts University.
Published: 1986
Number of pages: 327
Subjects: Literature, English.
Description: My critical study of Hilda Doolittle's poetry demonstrates that her trauma in pregnancy, which changed in meaning throughout her life, affected her self-representation and her aesthetics. I begin by explaining that H. D.'s initial emotional conflict about childbirth was expressed in two early statements of her poetics. In the next two chapters, I discuss the tension between creativity and procreation in her early prose fiction, and I analyze her indirect expression of the stillbirth of her first child in her early poetry. In the fourth chapter, I explain her creative use of her analysis with Freud in the watershed epic poem Trilogy, in which she integrated her poetic identity with her womanhood. Then, in two succeeding chapters I show that H. D.'s concept of "child-consciousness," which she regarded as the source of her creativity, prompted a critique, in Helen In Egypt, of the warrior ethos, of the romantic ideal of womanhood, and of the institution of motherhood. And finally, I argue that, in Hermetic Definition, this critique culminates in a new elaboration of the birth metaphor with important political ramifications for modern civilization.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-02, Section: A, page: 0537.

Thesis (PH.D.)--TUFTS UNIVERSITY, 1986.

School code: 0234.